1. Field of Invention:
This invention relates generally to toy vehicles, and in particular to a toy vehicle which is a small scale replica of an actual vehicle and which when propelled makes a noise that depends on the speed of the vehicle to simulate an actual engine noise.
2. Status of Art:
In most forms of play, the child seeks to emulate an adult activity; for in doing so, the child prepares to enter the adult world. In playing with a doll, the child will often assume the role of a mother; and in playing with toy vehicles, the child pretends to be driving a real-life automobile or truck. Hence, in the field of toy vehicles, children have a strong preference for those toys which have the familiar appearance of an existing model car. Most children are quick to recognize the difference between, say, a Cadillac and a Mercedes.
One highly popular form of toy vehicle is a motorless, free-wheeling miniature car which includes a cast metal replica of the body of a particular model of an actual vehicle. Children collect such miniatures and take pride in the range of their collection which includes many well-known models. To play with these toys, the child has only to push them along a table or ground surface. In the case of a miniature car made of cast metal having a relatively heavy mass, the car, if it has good bearings for the wheel axles, is capable of running a fairly long distance in response to a strong forward push.
There is, however, one respect in which a miniature toy car fails to replicate an actual running vehicle, and that is engine noise. In a vehicle having a multi-cylinder internal combustion engine, a thumping sound is heard each time the combustion mixture is fired in a cylinder. Since the cylinders are fired successively at a rate which depends on car speed, what is heard is a continuous series of thumping sounds whose repetition rate increases with speed.
But in a typical miniature toy car, when the car runs, it does so silently, and the absence of engine noise impairs the play value of the car. Noise is associated in a child's mind with work and effort. Thus, when a nail is hammered into wood, one hears a loud bang each time the hammer strikes the head of the nail, and the faster the hammering rate, the greater is the repetition rate of these sounds. It is for this reason that a child who pushes a car forward with all his strength is not rewarded psychologically when there is no sound which reflects his effort.